Don't Waste Your Life

I had insisted on going to the dump after moving out from another location's projects, knowing that it would be a different experience for me. But once I stepped into the slum, I tried to tell myself that this was no different from the other slums I had seen in Bangladesh and Myanmar.

I was wrong.

I walked into the dump, and immediately a burning smell hit me. Interesting, I thought. I had expected to smell rubbishy, garbage, rotting food smells, but all I got was the smell of burning plastic and rubber. And all of a sudden, OMG, there it was.

The mountain. Piled up high, seemingly made up of little specks of stuff. Many little specks make a mountain. Smoke rising, people walking on it, occasionally bending down for something. I continued to walk, observing the sights and smells around me.

And all of a sudden, I realised, that in that mountain, that there was everything but nothing at all. I looked at the stuff at my feet (I was walking on rubbish): old plush toys, used SIM cards, bags, shoes, clothing, plastic bags, wires. There was everything, but there was nothing at all. Each bag of rubbish weighing 1kg collected by the scavengers sells for about US 25cents. Nothing at all.

And then it occurred to me, that this paradox made perfect sense. Because our lives are not measured by the amount of things that we possess, but by the value of the things that we have. We can own lots of things, but if these things are not truly valuable, then at the end of the day, all we have is just rubbish.

Are we scavengers as well, in our own lives? Do we chase after what is truly valuable? Or do we scavenge around, risking our lives collecting things that are ultimately of no value? What is truly valuable to us? Our families, our friends, our chance to go to school, our faith? Or is our value placed in things that are worthless and last for a short while?

Life is a vapour. It appears for a little while, and then it disappears.

Don't waste your life.